Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Lanna's avatar

The roles of taste and data can co-exist. I'm reminded of this fantastic quote from this NYT article about SSENSE, a fashion aggregator that has become known for its own unique taste:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/style/the-sensibility-of-ssense.html

“Our growth is a result of our having two strong approaches — the art of it and the science of it,” said Krishna Nikhil, the chief merchandising and marketing officer. “We don’t blend art and science. If you blend, you get mush. We toggle.”

Mr. Atallah put it more directly: “I look at data day in and day out. That’s what feeds the intuition. Intuition is not just ‘I feel like doing it.’”

This mode of computer-science thinking, as Eric Hu, Ssense’s design director from 2016 to 2018, said, guides every aspect of the company’s decision making. “Rami has a very clear-cut vision for how things should be,” he said. “And he’s able to make very bold decisions because he requires data and actual intel to prove his hunches.”

Expand full comment
Michelangelo D'Agostino's avatar

“I am sorry, but if you are telling people that you can rank the effectiveness of a political ad “down to a tenth of a percentage point of precision in multiple categories,” you aren’t learning something; you are selling something.” That quote is from the journalists, not the people doing the ranking. The folks doing the ranking are serious social scientists who actually know how to calculate standard errors…

Expand full comment
44 more comments...

No posts